Writing about Games, Food, and other cool things

Author: spadafour

I’m an easy guy to scare in real life – it’s not hard to sneak up on me, especially when I’m concentrating on something else. Movies and games, however, generally leave me unfazed. Horrors stopped being scary sometime in early high school, once I realized that it was all fake. Even P.T. – save for one or two ‘gotcha’ jump scares and some sustained moments of uneasiness – was emotionally tolerable.

But RE7 scared me the hell out of me. Nearly every jump scare got to me. And more than a few times, I was wincing while moving my character as slowly as possible through the map. I even woke my girlfriend up once after shouting in terror. I tried reverse-engineering the levels in my head, analyzing where the map was funneling me, in an attempt to foresee which areas had the highest potential for hidden frights. But the game always found a way right back under my skin. RE7 knows more than how to scare you – it knows how to keep you scared.

The photorealistic environments do much of the heavy lifting. The locations are gross, grimy, and totally believable. Evidence covers the Baker’s land of a place that was once inhabited, lived in. This extends to all of the different locations: their new house, their old one, the trailer parked in the yard with Christmas lights fixed to it. The places themselves contain a wealth of information about the psychotic residents, inviting you to investigate every detail. In most rooms, I inspected each cluttered bookshelf, framed picture, and cupboard around; I wasn’t scouring for supplies alone. I was driven to scan the rooms slowly, absorbing all of the minutiae.

The scant supplies and slow pace are a direct throwback to the original. Even the save rooms are similar, with big green crates for item storage and tape recorders for saving (similar to type writers in the original). These elements, that have been mostly removed from the series since RE4, return to fine form here. RE7 is a testament to why these mechanics worked originally, and how well they can still hold up today.

Weapons are slow but powerful, and combat is methodical. Each round feels potentially devastating, but enemies attempt to defend by swerving and holding their hands in front of weak spots. The shots from the shotgun have a totally satisfying blast (any good shooter should be able to pass the shotgun test). I never felt entirely powerless, but I was always clinging to every round, mulling over every wasted bullet. And while the last act of the game leans into action-focused gameplay, much like the other entries in the series, I never felt overpowered or bored, and the game ends before it overstays its welcome.

Each member of the family plays into a different horror villain archetype. I gleaned enough details about each to figure out what makes them tick as I explored their domain, which made them even scarier. One likes to create puzzles for his victims, for instance, and you must solve his Jigsaw-like games. It gives each new area a unique mechanic and leaves you imagining the twisted machinations that the baddies have planned.

Resident Evil 7 resurrects the best of what made the series great. I’ve beaten it once and plan on replaying it again, on a higher difficulty. It’ll be interesting to see what the DLC looks like as well; the single player was a contained story. But with the level of quality that the campaign offered, I’m more than happy to go back and have the crap scared out of me again.

I’m far from the first to say this. The internet is abuzz with fans and critics picking apart every last bit of stilted dialogue and shoddy animation. Andromeda has become the latest high profile release that’s hip to rag on.

I initially planned to wait out the launch window storm of early impressions and play a few months later, after the inevitable string of bug fixes and balance patches. But despite all the negativity, the reception around Andromeda hasn’t been entirely unanimous. It’s one of those special releases where fans and newcomers alike have an experience anywhere from great to terrible. It’s a game that piques the interest of curious players like me, and I had to know how I would respond.

At around 20 hours in, I still have mixed feelings overall. The combat dynamic flows successfully between combo primers, detonators, and cover-based shooting, differentiating the ability based gameplay from more generic third person shooters. And the art design of the different planets mesh well with the overall vibe of the universe. It’s just a shame that the level design of those worlds and most combat encounters oftentimes hampers the fluidity of both combat and exploration. And it doesn’t help that the main story and side mission narratives are clunkers. Still, while I don’t think there are many more surprises left for me in the later parts, I’m driven to want to see the game through to the end.

Some quick personal background: I’m a fan of the series, especially ME2, which I played through some 4 or 5 times. The third game didn’t click with me as much; while it was nice to join Shepard on his or her space-opera-like final hurrah, the all-too-convenient storytelling was enough to simmer my adoration of the lore. I was, however, happily surprised by the multiplayer. I love the designs of the alien species, and the co-op wave based missions provided an outlet to role play as the different creatures that the single player did not.

I see the same trends from ME2 to ME3 as I see from ME3 to Andromeda. In an effort to create a grander experience, the separate elements of the game drift further apart. While the ‘fun’ factor of the combat and sheer number of quests and locations increases, the universe starts to feel less connected, and the seams tying it all together show even more. Those bad facial animations are much more noticeable when you run across yet another NPC who has four or five dialogue options to justify the fetch quest they are about to send you on. And the awe from the beautifully rendered planets dissipates quickly after multiple failed attempts to jump across a chasm or some clumsy animations of a character attempting to climb around on a cluster of rocks.

The addition of the dash and jump to movement can almost be exciting. The momentum is snappy and bouncy, and you get a sense of gravity as the character hangs at the apex of a jump. But the camera stutters just enough during dashes, as if it is struggling to keep up. During combat, the sudden movement becomes disorienting, and I often find myself overshooting or undershooting the next bit of cover I’m trying to get to. And while exploring, I can’t consistently get my avatar to clamber up a structure. These issues create a divide between the geometry of a level and my ability to navigate it, leaving the abilities seeming not finely tuned.

I could overlook many of these quirks if the narrative was engaging, but so far, the game has been light on the main story and heavy on the proper nouns and lore. The story is basically this: your father was the Pathfinder (read: space superhero), who had the task of locating planets that are safe to inhabit for what remains of humanity. He sacrificed himself and passed his abilities onto you in the all-too-brief opening sequence. Now, your job is to locate ancient alien technologies on different planets that can make the atmosphere stable to live on. But an evil alien race is trying to use that technology as well, probably to some nefarious ends.

Compared to the original games, Shepard’s tale was focused. As the first human Spectre agent, my moral decisions felt like they reflected the nature of the human race and impacted my relationship with the those around me. In Andromeda, the Pathfinder is an established role that the characters I encounter know more about than I do. And while the game tries to insist that as Pathfinder, I will be making big decisions, they so far haven’t felt like much more than different branches of some unlocks.

The side missions are lacking in depth, as well; there has only been one mission so far – where a rouge hacker group tries to disable the robot AI in the main character’s brain – with any semblance of an interesting story to tell. Most other quests amount to an NPC detailing their history and giving you a point on your map to go and scan for resources. And there is an overabundance of these types of quests to do.

While I’m not passionately invested in the trials that await me and my crew, the gameplay loop does come together efficiently every so often. And when it does, that Mass Effect magic ignites inside me again. Suddenly, I’m back on my ship, chatting with my crew, checking email, romancing that special alien in my life. And I get invested again, and I worry about which characters I’ll bring along to the next adventure. We land, and I slowly pan the camera across the unexplored terrain. And then I fall between some rocks in the geometry and get stuck in some accidental crevasse and have to reload an old save. That magic is still in there; it’s just buried further down than before.

I’ll be working on giving this blog a content overhaul, paring down on some content and looking for better ways to highlight others. Hopefully, I’ll be making some more frequent posts as well. Stay tuned!

This interactive website shows video and pictures of a small mining town in Canada. The narrator revisits the town that he visited when he was young and interviews the people who lived there, profiling them both then and now.

Here’s another about a country that still is (veiled in shadow and secrecy):

A look into one of the most bizarre countries on earth. Through pictures, the New York Times brings out what life is like in this country. The pictures work with the text to break through the wall of North Korea’s maintained public perception.

One of the most popular podcasts around, Serial is a weekly radio show that tells the story of a murder, 1 episode at a time. Season 1 focuses on Adnan Sayed, a man who was imprisoned for the mysterious murder of his girlfriend when he was in high school.